Will Earth Survive When the Sun Becomes a Red Giant?

Started by josephpalazzo, February 21, 2016, 07:47:50 AM

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josephpalazzo

A resounding NO!


This was published some years ago. In the grand scheme of thing, you're just a little worm crawling on this planet, and you worrying about your horrible life with your horrible problems is just plain ridiculous. Wake the fuck up and appreciate what you have.

Quote

Billions of years in the future, when our Sun bloats up into a red giant, it will expand to consume the Earth’s orbit. But wait, you say, the Earth travels the Earth’s orbit… what’s going to happen to our beloved planet? Will it be gobbled up like poor Mercury and Venus?


Astronomers have been puzzling this question for decades. When the sun becomes a red giant, the simple calculation would put its equator out past Mars. All of the inner planets would be consumed.

However, as the Sun reaches this late stage in its stellar evolution, it loses a tremendous amount of mass through powerful stellar winds. As it grows, it loses mass, causing the planets to spiral outwards. So the question is, will the expanding Sun overtake the planets spiraling outwards, or will Earth (and maybe even Venus) escape its grasp.

K.-P Schroder and Robert Cannon Smith are two researchers trying to get to the bottom of this question. They’ve run the calculations with the most current models of stellar evolution, and published a research paper entitled, Distant Future of the Sun and Earth Revisted. It has been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

According to Schroder and Smith, when the Sun becomes a red giant star 7.59 billion years, it will start to lose mass quickly. By the time it reaches its largest radius, 256 times its current size, it will be down to only 67% of its current mass.

When the Sun does begin to bloat up, it will go quickly, sweeping through the inner Solar System in just 5 million years. It will then enter its relatively brief (130 million year) helium-burning phase. It will expand past the orbit of Mercury, and then Venus. By the time it approaches the Earth, it will be losing 4.9 x 1020 tonnes of mass every year (8% the mass of the Earth).

But the habitable zone will be gone much sooner. Astronomers estimate that will expand past the Earth’s orbit in just a billion years. The heating Sun will evaporate the Earth’s oceans away, and then solar radiation will blast away the hydrogen from the water. The Earth will never have oceans again. It will eventually become molten again.

One interesting side benefit for the Solar System. Even though the Earth, at a mere 1.5 astronomical units, will no longer be within the Sun’s habitable zone, much of the Solar System will be. The new habitable zone will stretch from 49.4 AU to 71.4 AU, well into the Kuiper Belt. The formerly icy worlds will melt, and liquid water will be present beyond the orbit of Pluto. Perhaps Eris will be the new homeworld.

Back to the question… will the Earth survive?

According to Schroder and Smith, the answer is no. Even though the Earth could expand to an orbit 50% larger than today’s orbit, it won’t get the chance. The expanding Sun will engulf the Earth just before it reaches the tip of the red giant phase. And the Sun would still have another 0.25 AU and 500,000 years to grow

Once inside the Sun’s atmosphere, the Earth will collide with particles of gas. Its orbit will decay, and it will spiral inward.


If the Earth were just a little further from the Sun, at 1.15 AU, it would be able to survive the expansion phase. Although it’s science fiction, the authors suggest that future technologies could be used to speed up the Earth’s spiraling outward from the Sun.

I’m not sure why, but thinking about this far future of the Earth gives an insight into human psychology. People are genuinely worried about a future billions of years away. Even though the Earth will be scorched much sooner, its oceans boiled away, and turned into a molten ball of rock, it’s this early destruction by the Sun that feels so sad.

http://www.universetoday.com/12648/will-earth-survive-when-the-sun-becomes-a-red-giant/

Youssuf Ramadan

We're going to fuck up the planet way before that.  Interesting read though.  :smile:

aitm

Somewhere there will still be some nut job proclaiming Jesus is coming any minute….
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

josephpalazzo

Quote from: aitm on February 21, 2016, 08:42:16 AM
Somewhere there will still be some nut job proclaiming Jesus is coming any minute….


With the earth burning up as it spirals down into the sun, it will look more like hell...

Nonsensei

No need to save Earth when the sun expands. We can just fucking leave.
And on the wings of a dream so far beyond reality
All alone in desperation now the time has come
Lost inside you\'ll never find, lost within my own mind
Day after day this misery must go on

Atheon

By then, if the right-wingers don't destroy us first, our extremely distant descendants will have spread throughout the galaxy and will not need to worry about earth.
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." - Seneca

josephpalazzo

Quote from: Atheon on February 21, 2016, 09:15:56 AM
By then, if the right-wingers don't destroy us first, our extremely distant descendants will have spread throughout the galaxy and will not need to worry about earth.
*** My underlining

Why I feel that our descendants will be speaking Mandarin...

Johan

Quote from: Youssuf Ramadan on February 21, 2016, 08:13:32 AM
We're going to fuck up the planet way before that.  Interesting read though.  :smile:
This.

I was familiar with the whole sun growing to swallow the earth in 7 billion years thing before. And I've long thought that it wouldn't be an issue for any human life because we're going to drive ourselves into extinction long before that.

But this article is the first time I've seen that the habitability of the planet will go away just 1 billion years from now. That bit is new to me. Still, a billion years is a long time so I'm pretty confident we're going to find a way to eliminate ourselves long before the oceans dry up. We're people, its what we do.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful

stromboli

Quote from: josephpalazzo on February 21, 2016, 09:39:47 AM
*** My underlining

Why I feel that our descendants will be speaking Mandarin...

Cantonese. We are not worthy.

josephpalazzo

Quote from: stromboli on February 21, 2016, 10:17:56 AM
Cantonese. We are not worthy.

What difference will it make when the earth is spiraling into the sun? Duh...

AllPurposeAtheist

This worries me almost as much as the doctors office telling me that I have an appointment at 2:30, but get there a half hour early..  if I have to get there a half hour early then WHY NOT MAKE THE APPOINTMENT AT 2:00?  These are issues we are just not supposed to know.. Don't bother trying to figure them out..
Or in religispeak, It's a mystery my son.
All hail my new signature!

Admit it. You're secretly green with envy.

Unbeliever

#11
The sun's already been getting hotter for billions of years, and is now some 30% hotter than it began. It's life that keeps the Earth's temperature relatively stable (according to Lovelock), by regulating the Earth's albedo.

Now that techno-minds have evolved, we can keep that stability constant by using an orbital parasol to regulate how much sunlight falls on the planet. At the L1 point (where SOHO is located) a large object, or a large cluster of small objects, can block the sun's light from now until the sun leaves the main sequence. By then we should be able to build our own planets using the resources near at hand in the system.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

josephpalazzo

Quote from: Unbeliever on February 23, 2016, 06:45:00 PM
The sun's already been getting hotter for billions of years, and is now some 30% hotter than it began. It's life that keeps the Earth's temperature relatively stable (according to Lovelock), by regulating the Earth's albedo.

Now that techno-minds have evolved, we can keep that stability constant by using an orbital parasol to regulate how much sunlight falls on the planet. At the L1 point (where SOHO is located) a large object, or a large cluster of small objects, can block the sun's light from now until the sun leaves the main sequence. By then we should be able to build our own planets using the resources near at hand in the system.

We would be in much better shape had the government not reduced funding to NASA. At one point, the NASA budget was nearly 5% of the federal budget. Now, it's a paltry 0.5%. At its peak, it was hiring 400,000; down now to 19,000.  After the Cold War was over, there was a general perception among the population that such spending (on space exploration) was unimportant or not that important. We see the result today. Our boys have to hitchhike on Russian spacecrafts to go to the ISS.

surreptitious57

In five billion years time when this is going to happen there may not be any humans left upon Earth
Homo sapiens have only existed for one hundred thousand years and if the global population carries
on increasing at the rate it has it will become unsustainable long before the Sun goes red giant. And
there is also the possibility of an asteroid hitting Earth and wiping out all life. The one that landed in
Mexico sixty five million years ago wiped out ninety five per cent of life. And so it is entirely possible
A MIND IS LIKE A PARACHUTE : IT DOES NOT WORK UNLESS IT IS OPEN